The present disclosure is directed to an improvement of the fingering mechanism for woodwind instruments, in particular for oboes. For wind instruments the pitch of a note corresponds to the length of the oscillating air column reaching in the tube principally from the mouthpiece to the first open hole. Woodwind instruments achieve a variety of tone pitches by abridging the tube acoustically by opening tone holes typically placed on the front side of the tube.
In this sense, transverse flutes are woodwind instruments although today they are typically made of metal, whereas alphoms, panpipes and organs are not.
The seven tones of an octave of a major scale require accordingly seven tone holes. Prior to the present disclosure, the tone holes of the woodwind instruments were placed in a way that an ascending scale can be played by closing all tone holes placed in a row on the front side of the tube and then raising sequentially one finger after the other bottom up. Regarded from the mouthpiece, all these fingerings close all tone holes up to a particular one. From this particular tone hole on, all following tone holes are open. Fingerings like this are called “linear” in the following. Fingerings requiring closing tone holes below the first open tone hole are called “cross fingerings.”
To illustrate this, FIG. 1 represents an overview of the tone holes of the modern French Oboe for the tones Bb3 to C5, wherein closed tone holes are represented as filled circles and open tone holes as void circles. Additional holes which facilitate overblowing are not shown or represented, but only such holes that correspond to a note on the chromatic scale. Generally in this application, an annotation shall be used wherein “b” stands for “flat” and “#” for “sharp”, e.g. Bb is B flat and has the same pitch as A# or A sharp. Where tone holes in FIG. 1 are labeled, they are given the same designation as the tone/pitch to which they correspond. To play the tone Bb4, i.e. A#4, the tone hole F# is closed in order to actuate a mechanism which opens tone hole Bb. In a similar matter, to play C5, i.e. B#4, the tone hole F# is closed in order to actuate a mechanism which opens tone hole C. These fingerings are cross fingerings. For all other tones, a linear fingering is given.
Compared to corresponding or neighbored linear fingerings, the cross fingerings tend to yield restrained or stuffy tones with reduced dynamics and instable intonation, more rarely notably and unpleasantly glaring tones with stronger dynamics.
The existence of cross fingerings side by side with linear fingerings and with other cross fingerings results in a heavily inhomogeneous sound. An extreme example for this are the adjacent tones Bb4 and C5 on the French Oboe.
Some people perceive the tone Bb4 as lyrical, others as stuffy. As a matter of fact, the dynamics is considerably reduced, the intonation however is unproblematic. The tone C5 in contrast, is glaring with strong dynamics and instable intonation.
Until fingering mechanisms were invented, tones of the diatonic scale were produced to a wide extent with linear fingerings, whereas black notes were generated with cross fingerings. That way, the inhomogeneity was not only hidden, but even justified. These days in contrast, where the full chromatic scale is desired, the inhomogeneity is considered spurious.
To avoid cross fingerings, each semitone requires a separate, tone hole. It is common practice to evolve the whole pitch range out of the lower octave by overblowing. This technique requires 12 tone holes, and possibly further holes which facilitate overblowing. A player cannot actuate all 12 tone holes with his 10 fingers, the more so as one finger holds the instrument and another one actuates the octave key which allows overblowing. This problem becomes even worse for instruments overblowing a twelfth instead of an octave.
Whereas the diatonic scale can be played with linear fingerings by closing the tone holes directly by the fingers, playing a chromatic scale in contrast, requires a fingering mechanism, which communicates the movement of the fingers to distant tone holes wherever necessary.
Today's fingering mechanisms eliminate cross fingerings to a wide extent and contribute that way to a homogeneous sound. Conversely, fingering mechanisms introduce additional cross fingerings, if a key is intended to actuate a remote tone hole but at the same time closes the tone hole below the key, although another tone hole which is closer to the mouthpiece with respect to the air column in the tube is open.
FIG. 1 illustrates the situation with the tones Bb4 and C5 on a French oboe, Système Conservatoire For both tones, the index finger presses the F# key in order to open the Bb-tone hole and the C-tone hole via a mechanism which is depicted schematically. At the same time, the F# key closes the F# tone hole below. Since, among other tone holes, the G tone hole, which is closer to the mouthpiece, is open, two cross fingerings occur.
The two fingering mechanisms for oboes competing against the Système Conservatoire avoid to close the F# key and by that the cross fingering by obtaining Bb4=A#4 from A4 and accordingly C5=B#4 from B4 by pressing another key.
To this end, the Vienna Oboe uses a trill key and loses by that smoothness of fingering and quality of tone. The English thumb plate system uses an additional thumb key and by that loses a considerable portion of pitch range because the thumb plate cannot be combined with the third octave key.
Oboes allowing both the fingering of the thumb plate system and of the Système Conservatoire do not combine the advantages of both systems; the performer may only choose the shortcoming which seems more acceptable. Typically, advanced performers are not willing to adopt new or additional fingerings. In practice, the thumb plate system is limited to countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Vienna Oboe to the city of Vienna and its philharmonic orchestra.